Group Visibility

What visibility changes, and what it does not

Visibility is a viewing control. Hiding a group does not delete anything and does not change a single number: the sidebar count, the totals, the zone breakdown and the Excel quantities export all stay exactly as they were.

What it changes is the drawing. There are three states:

Cover is the "have I got them all?" check. Blank out everything you have counted and any symbol still showing on the sheet is one you missed.

Hide is for clearing the view — getting a busy service out of the way while you work on another, or looking at the bare drawing for a moment.

Covering or hiding one group

1. 1

   Open the menu on the group's row.

2. 2

   Hover Visibility to open its submenu.

3. 3

   Tick Cover or Hide .

4. 4

   Untick it to bring the group back to normal.

Cover and Hide are mutually exclusive — choosing one clears the other. Every group type has this submenu, annotation groups included.

Hiding a whole marker type

The Filter marker types button in the sidebar toolbar works on types rather than individual groups. It is the right tool when you want every Linear group out of the way at once.

1. 1

   Click in the sidebar toolbar.

2. 2

   Untick any of Count Symbol , Auto Count Symbol , Linear Measurement or Area Measurement . In Annotations view the list is replaced by a single Annotations tick.

3. 3

   Use the Hide and Cover switch at the top of the menu to choose what happens to the types you unticked. The current mode is shown in bold.

4. 4

   Tick Canvas Only if you want the filter to affect the drawing but leave every group listed in the sidebar.

The button fills in as while a filter is active, so you always know a type is being held back. If a group has vanished from the sidebar and you cannot think why, check this button first.

Cover All and Hide All

To blank or clear the whole drawing in one action, choose Actions then Visibility in the workspace header. It holds two tick boxes:

• Cover All — covers every group on the drawing.
• Hide All — hides every group on the drawing.

Untick to restore. Both are only available in Takeoff mode; the whole submenu is greyed out in Review mode.

Where these settings are kept

Cover and Hide, the type filter, and which groups you left collapsed are all remembered for each drawing in the browser you are working in. Reopen the drawing on the same machine and you get your view back.

They are not shared. A colleague opening the same drawing sees every group visible and expanded, and so will you if you switch to another computer or clear your browser data. Nothing is lost when that happens — the markers themselves are unaffected — but a view you set up for a presentation will need setting up again.

Common issues

A group's count is right but I cannot see it on the drawing

Check the group's Visibility submenu for a ticked Hide, then check the filter for an unticked type, then check whether you are in Mask view, which dims every group that is not in the mask.

Markers turned white and I did not do it

Cover All is a tick box and stays ticked until you untick it. Open Actions then Visibility and clear it.

Next steps

• Group appearance — colour and opacity, for when you want to see a group but see less of it.
• Mask view — isolating one service and fading everything else.
• Managing groups — the rest of the group row and its menu.
• Exporting drawing images — how hidden and covered groups come out.